


A Quick Lesson In Saying Goodbye

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dreams, Earth C (Homestuck), like literally i dreamed this, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art, oh i always forget about this fic, probably why there's THAT pov, uhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 19:20:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Just. Dave has a dream, Dirk wakes him up, Dave tells him about it. Maybe sadstuck a little? I don't know.





	A Quick Lesson In Saying Goodbye

I only know that I’m done dreaming when I feel a hand on my shoulder, shaking me too gently to be Karkat. Even  before I’m all the way awake, I can feel wetness on my face…fuck. Crying in my sleep again, not that it’s a surprise. My mind’s still half-in the dream, too—until I force myself to open my eyes, all I can see is Bro’s last grin, amused but still so fucking heartbreaking. 

The sense of disconnect gets worse for a second when I do open my eyes, because the face frowning down at me is only a little different from the one in my head, and the hand on my shoulder is wearing those shitty fingerless gloves. It’s not him, though. Well…maybe a little. Biologically yes, but no in every way that matters. 

"You all right?“ Dirk asks. 

It’s weird. My voice sticks in my throat. I nod anyway, sitting up on the couch and swiping one sleeve across my face to get rid of the tears. Too bad my eyes haven’t gotten the message to stop dripping yet… "Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” I halfway don’t want to look at him—falling asleep halfway through a party is stupid and having him wake me up after the thing’s over because I’m crying is fucking lame—but on another level I need to stare at him, satisfy myself that he’s not dead. Not Bro and not dead. I end up rubbing my eyes like a little kid, trying to stare at him without being all that obvious. “I’m okay.” 

He’s not wearing his shades; normally that’d help to get the weird déjà vu to dissipate, but not this time. Right now all it means is that I can tell when he’s looking at me, and he does for a couple seconds before sitting down on the couch next to me, leaning over to pick up my shades off the floor. “Nightmares.” He doesn’t make it a question, more of an open-ended statement. For once, though, I do want to talk. 

"Not really.“ I take the shades, setting them on my lap and rubbing the last of the wetness out of my eyes. "A dream, yeah, maybe a bad one. But…just sad. Not shit to be afraid of.” 

"Even the sad ones suck, though…and I’m guessing it’s worse for you.“ Dirk frowns, blinks, and adds, "The Time stuff, I mean. I know you probably went through more bad shit than any of us.”

"Maybe. Sometimes.“ I dream about the doomed timelines a lot; it scares the shit out of Karkat when it happens. Those nightmares are horrible. "This wasn’t about that, though. It wasn’t a dreambubble either.” 

"You still get those?“ 

"Not that often anymore, but yeah.” I never know how to feel about the bubbles. They hurt, sometimes, but talking to ghosts isn’t something I really want to stop doing. “I just…this wasn’t memories, wasn’t dreambubbles, wasn’t even meaningless random shit. I don’t know.” I put my shades on. Apparently I might not be done crying, because they fog up more or less immediately; I take them off and start polishing them with my shirt. “You ever get dreams that you know shouldn’t mean anything, but you think they do anyway?” 

Dirk considers for a minute, then shrugs. “I dream about the game a lot,” he says, “about all the ways I could’ve fucked up, or being back on Earth and never meeting another human, being the only one left in an empty session with no door out, taking a metaphysical wrong turn somewhere and ending up as one of the versions of me that're even worse than who I am. Or just meaningless random shit, like you said.”  
   
"Different versions of you. Bro?“

"That’s one of the scary ones, yeah.” 

"That’s who I was dreaming about.“ My shades are clean; I really don’t need to keep wiping at them but I do need a reason not to look at him. It’s blatantly obvious avoidance tactics, but I do need an excuse to not look at him as I talk. "Bro.” My eyes itch. 

Dirk’s looking at me. I don’t have to look at him to know it; I can feel it. “You okay?” Does he know how much his voice reminds me of Bro sometimes? I hope not. 

"I’m okay.“ 

"You want to talk?” 

Fuck yes, please. “If you’re okay with listening, yeah.” 

I look up at him as he nods. I can’t stop fidgeting with my shades as I start talking. The whole dream’s so fucking clear in my memory, easy to drag out—there are things that actually happened that I don’t remember half this well.

**********

The roof. I’d spent a lot of time here, once. Not that it used to look like this—the rest of the city gone dark, chunks of the skyline missing where something made impact with the ground, smashing buildings like toys. It was barely recognisable, actually. 

And the sky…that, I recognised, but it was still wrong. No stars, but brighter than if there was. The sky, the actual fabric of reality, was cracked open in spiderweb fractures from horizon to horizon, spectrums of color coruscating where the void wasn’t. 

 I have no clue how long I just sat there with my legs hanging off the edge, watching the colors change and thinking about the fact that this was our fault. Well, maybe that wasn’t what I meant…but we, me and people I knew, were the reason that the sky was broken. We’d set into motion events that changed the structure of reality. Destroyed it a bit, maybe. 

I wasn’t sure what to think about that, so as much as I could, I didn’t think. About anything. If time was passing, I couldn’t sense it, and for awhile nothing changed but the sky. 

"Hey, lil’ man.“ 

He almost made me jump. Almost. Instead, I just turned my head. "Didn’t you die?” Had he been there the whole time, lying back with his hands behind his head and watching the sky? “You look like shit.” 

Bro rolled his eyes at me—fuck, when was the last time I’d seen him without his shades?—and grinned, pushing himself up onto his elbows.“Wrong on the first count, but I ain’t gonna argue on the second.” Any other time, the amount of blood on him would have made me dizzy, but right now? Just made me achingly sad. Maybe confused as to how he was functioning at all—there was a wet stain in the center of his chest, and although I didn’t want to look all that closely, I was pretty sure his throat had been cut, from the amount of blood there. “Don’t worry, though. You’ll be right on both counts in a little while.” 

"You’re dying.“ Fuck. Again. 

Bro nodded, still smiling. "Yep. But hey, you’re not. Means I did my job right, huh?”

"Fuck no you didn’t.“ I said it and knew I shouldn’t be saying it, but him thinking he did any part of raising me right—other than not actually killing me or getting me killed—sent a spike of half-blinding anger into my head. "What part are you saying you did right? Beating the shit out of me? Taking off for months, letting me fend for myself? Fuckin’ Cal, are you calling that shit right? It wasn’t, none of it was, and you fuckin’ know it.” 

He let me finish without stopping me, without even losing his faint smile, and even waited a couple seconds to be sure I was done. “You’re alive, though. Stay that way, kid.” And her reached across with one hand, trying to ruffle my hair. 

The fact that I could dodge him that easily drove home the point that yeah, he was dying. Most of my anger evaporated—what was the point? “Fuck you, Bro.” And because I wouldn’t get another chance, and I was still pissed: “You know I hated you, right?” 

"Really.“ I’d expected some kind of reaction from him—anger, maybe, or scorn. Something other than him just looking up at the sky for another moment before sitting all the way up and turning to me. "You know I cared about you, right?” 

There was absolutely nothing about him that suggested he was lying. He believed that shit, and I shook my head. “Like fuck you did.” 

"No, really. Everything I did was to give you a better chance, keep you alive in this damn thing. You’re a good kid, y'know? Would’ve sucked if I spent that much time on you and you went and got yourself creamed in your fuckin’ game.“ 

"Fuck you.” I’d said that once already, but he didn’t seem to be getting the message. Might as well repeat it. “You did what you did ‘cause it was easier to kick my ass and fuck my head up than to teach me shit like a fuckin’ normal person. You were a bastard then and you’re an asshole now, and you don’t get to turn it around and call it what was best for me.” I was getting angry again, somehow without losing any of the sadness. God, but this was pointless—it couldn’t change anything that’d happened, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be changing. “You—fuck. Fuck you.” 

If he’d gotten angry, I would’ve been okay. Scared, but okay. Instead he just shrugged, staring at me as if he’d never bothered to take a good look before. Come to think of it, maybe he hadn’t. “You said you hated me,” he said quietly.

"Damn straight.“ 

"Nah, you said 'hated.’ Past tense. You hate me right now, lil’ man?” 

"I—" I could’ve lied, easy. Except I really couldn’t. “No.” He was my Bro, and the awful thing was that he’d been a good brother sometimes. Maybe not often, maybe not for a long time, but hey. I didn’t forget the good shit. And he was dying, and as stupid as it was, my eyes were getting blurry. “F-fuck you, alright?” 

He tilted his head, and I don’t think I’d ever seen that expression on his face before. “Aw, hell, kid.” This time when he reached for me he moved slower than before. I was still too fucking tired to dodge, even though I could see blood on his hand and I didn’t exactly want that touching me. “You’re cryin’, lil’ man.” 

His fingers felt damp against my face, but when he took his hand away and I went to wipe at where he’d touched, my fingers came away clean. “Stupid.” 

"Nah.“ Pity. Maybe that was what that look was. Or regret. Either way, something I’d never gotten out of him. "That ain’t stupid, just human. Least someone’s gonna remember me.” He sighed, slumping a little and looking down at the mess of what used to be Houston. “For what it’s worth, I think I did my best. I loved you, kid. Love you now. If I wasn’t on my way out—” 

"Just shut up.“ It came out a hell of a lot harsher than I’d meant it to. He was telling the truth. That was the horrible thing. He did think he hadn’t done anything wrong, and I knew he was wrong. And in the end, it didn’t matter. "I don’t hate you. Not all the time. It’s not worth it.” I’d already said most of the pointless things I could to him, but I still had at least one more. “Fuck, Bro, why’d you get yourself killed like this?” 

My voice cracked halfway through the sentence. I think that the moment I knew it was a dream was when Bro stared at me, shrugged, and reached over to wrap his arms around me. He’d never done that, he would never do that, and for a second I was fully aware that none of this was even a little real, and I could’ve broken out of it. Instead, I just hugged him. Forgot about the reality or lack thereof of all this, forgot about the blood, forgot about all the stupid pointless shit for some length of time that I didn’t bother trying to keep track of. 

However long it was, it wasn’t long enough before he winced and let me go, pushing me back gently. God, I almost wished he wasn’t being gentle. That’d make shit easier. “You gonna be alright, lil’ man?” 

Good fucking question. “Yeah.” I was shaking my head even as I said it, wiping at my eyes with my sleeve. “I—fuck, I miss you. I’m pissed at you, I hate you, and I fuckin’ hate you. And it just—it gets worse, 'cause I hate myself for caring about you 'n I feel like shit for hating you when you’re gone because of me, it’s so—so fucking stupid—” 

"Shh.“ He shook his head, glancing out at the ruined city, folding one arm across his chest and grimacing before looking back at me. "I know. I know, kid, it sucks.” He reached over with his free hand, lacing his fingers through mine and giving them a quick squeeze before letting go. “If it was my choice, I’d make you forget me. Everything about me—good shit, bad shit, the whole shebang. You’re a good kid…wish I didn’t have to leave you.” One more look out at the skyline, his hand coming up to rub at the cut around his neck. “My time’s just about up…the guardian’s almost here. Can you give me a hand up, kid?” 

"Yeah.“ I got to my feet, grabbing his hand and trying to pull him up. If I’d been able to get ahold of both of his hands it would’ve been a piece of cake, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t take his other arm away from where it was pressed against his chest. In the end, I pulled his arm across my shoulders, dragging him to his feet and letting him lean against me. "What’s the guardian, Bro?” 

For a second he didn’t answer, breathing heavy and leaning on me for support. He might not have been hurting before, but now he sure as hell was now. “The one that’s coming to get me…it’ll be whatever I deserve.” He’d been looking out at the skyline, eyes half-focused; now he glanced at me again, smiling a little. “Probably an animal, that’s what I think…what d'you think it’ll be?” 

I didn’t think about it. “Eagle.” Didn’t know why I picked it, either, but Bro laughed, a genuinely amused grin spreading across his face.   
"Never been that brave, kid.“ He pulled out of my grip, and even though I didn’t want to let go, I didn’t have a choice. "Never been that innocent, either.” This time when he reached out to ruffle my hair, I didn’t dodge it. “I’m sorry.” 

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. There’s no fucking answer to that, you know? Not, “it’s okay,” because it isn’t, not “you should be,” even though that’s the truth. Nothing. Maybe the fact that my eyes were so blurry I could barely see him was some kind of answer in itself, I don’t know, but when he took his hand away I had to close my eyes, blink away some of the tears, and wipe at my face for a second. 

When I opened my eyes again, he wasn’t looking at me anymore, and the cracks in the sky weren’t the brightest thing there. 

The guardian wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before, but when I looked at it I still felt like it was familiar—an animal, not quite a wolf and not quite a lion but a little like both, faceless and covered in pure white fur that could have been soft or could have been made out of a thousand million tiny needles, standing calmly on the air just past the edge of the roof with its long tail switching back and forth. Next to it, Bro looked like a kid. An amazed, terrified, hurt kid. Reminded me of myself, from some time before now, and fuck but that hurt. 

"Bro…“ My voice cracked and almost quit, but I forced one more sentence out. "I don’t want you to go.” 

I got a glance back from him, and a shrug, and a grin that spoke of some painful (but still amusing) cosmic joke that I was missing out on. “Sorry, Dave…” 

And he took two steps forward, staggering before he stepped off the edge and catching himself on the guardian, wrapping his arms around its neck and burying his face in its fur. I blinked, and the bloodstains on his clothes and skin faded away. Blinked again, and I was the only thing alive in that place.

**********

"After that,“ I say, not looking at anything except my hands in my lap—definitely not at Dirk— "I think I just cried until you woke me up.” I’m just thankful he let me talk through the whole thing. He hasn’t asked questions, hasn’t done anything other than listen and, when I started crying again, reached over to put a hand on my shoulder. “Which…fuck, I didn’t cry this much when he really died, it’s so fucking stupid..." 

I want to be able to not be crying. That isn’t happening. 

"I don’t think it’s stupid,“ Dirk says quietly. "Shit takes time to sink in, you start to forget the aspects of him that were worth hating…you can’t always say goodbye at the right time. There isn’t a wrong way to feel about his being gone, you know?” 

"Wish it didn’t hurt.“ When I put my shades on they don’t fog up, thank god, and I can finally look up at Dirk. "Wish he was—fuck, I don’t know…my mind wants him to have been like you are, worth having as a brother, worth mourning and missing and whatever, but he’s not.” 

Dirk blinks. Several times. “I don’t know what went wrong that he wasn’t,” he says. “I’m glad you think I’m better than he was. I’m sorry he wasn’t better.” 

"Not your fault.“ I sigh, and lean against him. "He sucked, but you…you make up for it…thanks, man.” 

He’s smiling. Just a little. “No problem, Dave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay this was a dream I had, the whole thing was included in the dream, when I dream about being Dave if it's coherent I write about it. I have no less garbled explanation.


End file.
